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Ghana’s first international airport was originally built as a military base used by the British Royal Air Force during the World War II in 1946.
The facility, which was initially known as the Accra International Airport in 1968 will later become a civilian airport after World War II in the 1950s.
A rare image of the airport sighted by GhanaWeb shows a rather small facility with the inscription ‘Accra Airport’ labelled in small signage while ‘Welcome to Ghana’ was labelled in bold signage.
History has it that the Accra International Airport was in use from 1956 to 1969 before it became Kotoka International Airport which is now the site for today’s KIA Terminal 1 section.
Ghana’s first Prime Minister, Dr Kwame Nkrumah was said to have in 1956 launched a development project to reconfigure the former structure into a terminal building in order to meet growing demand for passengers and commercial demands.
In 1969, the Accra International Airport was renamed Kotoka International Airport in to honour of one the country’s military rulers, Lt. General E.K Kotoka who had passed away.
The completion of the reconfiguration project set the tone for the country’s first home-based carrier, Ghana Airways. The airliner in 1985 began to use the airport as its main operating base in Accra-Ghana.
Since the renaming, the KIA underwent a number of infrastructure upgrades and improved facilities to meet travel demands as the airport was initially designed to host 500,000 passengers annually.
However, Ghana Airways which operated with pride for some years collapsed in 2004 due to an array of technical, financial and managerial setbacks. In that same year, when the airline folded, a new civil aviation ACT was enacted into law.
Known as the Civil Aviation Act, 2004 (Act 678), it required the separation of the airports management functions of the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA).
This then resulted in the establishment of the Ghana Airports Company Limited which was incorporated in January 2006 but commenced operations in January 2007 with the mandate to develop, maintain and manage all airports in the country.
The GCAA on its part serves as the sole regulator of the air transport sector and provider of air navigation services in Ghana.
An Airplane Arriving at the Airport, Accra, Ghana, 1950 Photo Credit: Eldred Echols and Boyd Reese
Terminal 1 section of KIA
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
